FIG Working Week and XXXI General Assembly in Stockholm,
Sweden
14-19 June 2008

Integrating Generations - the Biggest FIG Working Week in
History

The FIG Working Week held in Stockholm, Sweden just before the
Midsummer Night was the biggest Working Week ever held. During the event
young surveyors were very much in evidence, and mentor sessions brought the
generations together. FIG wants to mobilise the next generation of Land
Professionals and continue to develop innovative and transitionary solutions
to address global inequality in land and property ownership and tenure.

The Working Week was hosted jointly by the International Federation of
Surveyors (FIG) and the Swedish Association of Chartered Surveyors (Sveriges
Lantmätareförening, SLF), which at the same time celebrated its 100th
Anniversary. The theme of the Working Week “Integrating Generations”
was in line with the overall theme of the current FIG Council: “Building
the Capacity”. 950 participants from 90 nations attended the event and
the exhibition. In addition to the plenary sessions there were over 70
technical sessions, with almost 350 presentations, and technical tours. The
Working Week included the joint FIG/UN-HABITAT seminar on “Improving Slum
Conditions through Innovative Financing”. The conference venue was the
Stockholm City Conference Centre – Norra Latin and Folkets Hus – comfortably
located within a walking distance to main attractions and venues.

Integrating Generations

FIG is a global organisation that aims to build bridges between ages,
cultures and continents. Integrating the young generation is a key issue
within FIG. This was demonstrated during the opening ceremony by the Swedish
Minister for Environment Andreas Carlgren – who opened the conference
together with Carl-Olof Ternryd, Honorary President of FIG and
President of the FIG Council in 1977, when the conference was for the last
time arranged in Sweden, and Cecilia Lindén, Chair of the FIG Working
Group for Young Surveyors. The younger generation should not only give a new
look to the FIG: their contribution will be most relevant in solving the
issues of our time – where surveying is the backbone of society. In his
speech Andreas Carlgren emphasised that in Sweden land and property underpin
the economy. However, he said that in developing countries legal empowerment
of the poor is required to support property ownership, and information
systems are needed to stop us guessing. The Minister said: “You (FIG)
have such an important key role to play, to combat environmental threat, to
combat poverty and slums and to support the development of this globe and
its cities.”

In his opening remarks Prof. Stig Enemark, FIG President said: “We
tied the ribbon between the generation that changed the world from analogue
to digital and takes digital media for granted – but work needs to be done
in many countries.”

The cultural programme of the opening ceremony included traditional folk
music and dances from Sweden performed by the representatives from
Skansen, the famous outdoor museum in Stockholm, and musical
entertainment performed by the music corps of the Dragoon’s Battalion of the
Royal Guards. They played both melodies from ABBA and a new arrangement of
the FIG Fanfare that was also recorded for future use.

Cooperation with UN-HABITAT

At the opening ceremony the keynote address was given by Dr. Anna K.
Tibaijuka, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of
UN-HABITAT. In her speech she reminded the audience that the world is
becoming more urban: “Cities are not prepared to welcome and receive the
new influx. The challenge, therefore, is to try to guide this urbanisation
process. The urban poor are potentially capable of contributing 20 billion
US dollars per year to improve their own living conditions. This would leave
approximately 5 billion US dollars per year to be mobilised from other
sources – currently this is only 2 billion US dollar.”

According to Dr. Tibaijuka only some 10 percent of land parcels in the
world are registered; in many areas, the poor’s land rights are based on
customary rights that are not legally recognised, but are socially
legitimate and only some 5 percent of registered land, is registered in a
woman’s name. She noted that individual freehold titling is not always
appropriate for a number of reasons including, the costs of adjudication,
high technical standards, expensive registration and transfer fees, and
literacy requirements. She observed that the development of new land tools,
such as the FIG Land Administration Domain Model, will allow for the
registration of customary forms of tenure and overlapping land rights and
claims.

Dr. Tibaijuka announced that UN-HABITAT has a two-year agreement with
Google to collaborate on new mapping tools using modern technologies. The
FIG/UN-HABITAT Seminar “Slum Upgrading through Innovative Financing
Mechanisms” discussed for two days the challenges and approaches that
suit the poor; e.g. intermediate forms of title; gender sensitive title and
incremental finance from group to project. Finance that is also attractive
to banks where it reduces transaction costs and risk. Land markets should
also work for the poor, using innovative planning instruments. A radical
suggestion might be to create teams of young people to be mentored by
different experts – a New Curriculum for Land Professionals: they will need
to be adept at discussing and facilitating multi professional issues, and
working with other professional groups. This integrated seminar experience
will be forwarded to the 4th World Urban Forum in China November 2008.

The Joint FIG/UN-HABITAT Seminar attracted new delegates to the FIG
Working Week broadening discussions from mere surveyors to multi-discipline
dialogue between land professionals and economists.

Plenary sessions

The first plenary session following the opening ceremony was titled “Sustainable
Urban Development and the Millennium Development Goals”. The keynote
addresses were given by Minister Carlgren who talked about the environment
and climate and the role of property and land administration institutions in
society.

The second speaker was Dr. Ashraf Ghani, Chairman of the Institute
for State Effectiveness (Afghanistan), who spoke about the legal empowerment
in a globalizing world. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor
published its report: “Making the Law Work for Everyone” with a four
pillar approach on empowerment of the poor: access to justice and the rule
of law, property rights, labour rights and business rights. Dr. Ghani
stated: “The Land Professional can bring Information, Knowledge and
Wisdom into Harmony”.

President Enemark made his major contribution to the conference programme
in this plenary session summarising and focussing on the partnership between
FIG and the UN agencies in support of the Millennium Development Goals. He
emphasised in his presentation that "the UN agencies have access to
national governments and to setting an global agenda, but they will often
depend on interest groups and NGOs for implementing this agenda. FIG as an
international NGO on the other hand has access to national associations and
individual professionals, but at the same time as other NGOs will often
depend on the UN agencies to determine the global agenda. This is why the
global partnership is needed to establish the link that drives development
for achieving the global agenda such as the MDGs."

The second plenary session “Land Administration and Finance Systems“
was also organised jointly with the FIG/UN-HABITAT seminar. This session was
chaired by Lars Magnusson and Ann Jennervik, focal persons
together with Bengt Kjellson in organising this special seminar. The
speakers in this sessions included Michael Mutter, from UN-HABITAT
Slum Upgrading Facility, speaking about expanding the outreach of housing
finance for the urban poor from co-operational point of view and Renu Sud
Karnad, Joint Managing Director of the Housing Development Finance
Corporation Limited – India telling about concepts of channelling financial
flows for adequate and affordable housing. Dan Ericsson, State
Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Sweden explained the Swedish
engagement in land administration and housing finance. Dr. Malcolm
Childress, Sr. Land Administration Specialist from the World Bank
brought the World Bank vision to the discussion ”Land Finance through
Land Governance—Expanding the Discussion of Land Policy during Food Crisis,
Climate Change and Rapid Urbanization”. This new view of world
population growth was also demonstrated by President Enemark in his closing
address. The contribution from the World Bank was an important and highly
influential contribution to the conference.

Professional highlights

David Zilkoski from NOAA, USA identified in his presentation at
the third plenary session that the new customers for our professional
services are: emergency managers, planners and developers, insurance
industry, agricultural industry, construction industry, environmental
engineers, coastal managers, local governments, tribal governments,
international organizations, academia, professional organizations and
foreign counterparts.

In this plenary session, chaired by Vice President Matt Higgins,
focussed on technical and organisational innovations, the other speakers
were Frank Udnaes from the Galileo Unit of the European Commission
giving an overview on the status of the European EGNOS and Galileo
Programmes and Stig Jönsson, Director General of Lantmäteriet
(National Land Survey of Sweden), discussing about building integrated land
information systems and about development of NSDI by using Sweden as an
example.

Sweden has taken the initiative for the construction of a national
satellite imagery database for measurements over Sweden – Saccess. The
satellite database was launched the week after the conference (24 June).
Everyone can download satellite images of Sweden entirely free. Another
interesting piece of information was that Nokia will increase the production
of GPS supported mobiles to 35 million this year and within two-to-four
years may be the biggest GNSS device producer, if Nokia's vision that up to
50% of handsets may be AGPS-capable (Michael Halbherr, Nokia Location
Based Services) comes true.

Approximately 40 of the presented papers have been peer reviewed. Peer
review was introduced because of the growing requirement for university
staff to concentrate their submission of papers on conferences that offer a
peer review process. Given that a significant number of papers presented at
FIG events are submitted by people from universities, it was decided that
FIG needed to make that possibility available or risk losing a significant
number of high quality authors. It was also recognised that many similar
associations and professions are offering peer review of papers and that FIG
needed to keep up with accepted normal practice. It was considered that the
concept worked well in Stockholm and that the option for peer reviewed
papers will be offered also at the incoming working weeks and congresses.
There seemed to be a common opinion that the overall quality of the
presented papers has increased and at the same time number of no-shows has
decreased.

Professional development

In providing solutions to worldwide challenges the surveyors and land
professionals can contribute from a broad perspective – this can easily be
demonstrated by the focus of attention of FIG’s 10 Commissions: Professional
Practice; Professional Education; Spatial Information Management;
Hydrography; Positioning and Measurement; Engineering Surveys; Cadastre and
Land Management; Spatial Planning and Development; Valuation and the
Management of Real Estate; and Construction Economics and Management.

Land Governance is the core area for surveyors and land professionals –
land rights are political. Advocating pro poor systems requires cooperation
with governments and politicians to develop the governmental side of land
management. The profession has a key role to play here.

During the FIG 31st General Assembly, held at June 15th and 19th 2008 in
Stockholm two new Vice Presidents and new Commission Chairs Elect were
elected. The two new Vice Presidents are Iain Greenway from United
Kingdom and Teo CheeHai from Malaysia. Both Vice Presidents are well
known within the Federation and their contributions have always been highly
appreciated – and the expectations for their term of office 2009 – 2012 are
related to this. Vice Presidents Paul van der Molen and Ken Allred
will leave the Council at the end of 2008.

The General Assembly elected and appointed Commission Chairs Elect for
2009-2010 are:

FIG Guidelines on Capacity Assessment in Land Administration. This
Guide, developed in cooperation with FAO, is offered as a tool for
improving existing Land Administration Systems through in-county self
assessment of the capacity needs, especially in developing and
transition countries where the financial resources are limited;

The FIG Publications are worldwide recognised by professionals, academia,
NGOs and organisations as UN-HABITAT, FAO and the Word Bank in developing
policies, profession and practise. More the forty high level publications
can be downloaded on the FIG Website. Amongst the newest FIG Publications
there is also ‘The FIG Profile’ which is the latest FIG brochure explaining
the benefits of being an FIG member. The role of FIG, Commission activities,
way of organisation, operation, financing and administration are explained.
The FIG international cooperation is highlighted.

The General Assembly adopted two new member associations at its meeting:

Geodetic Engineers of the Philippines, Inc

Chamber of Graduate Surveyors from Bulgaria

Further nine new affiliate members were endorsed:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, United States
Department of Commerce, USA

Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster), the
Netherlands

Surveying Department, Dubai Municipality, United Arab Emirates

National Land Survey of Finland (Maanmittauslaitos, MML), Finland

National Survey and Cadastre (Kort og Matrikelstyrelse, KMS),
Denmark

National Land Survey of Sweden (Lantmäteriet, LM), Sweden

General Directorate for Surveying, Ministry of Water Resources,
Republic of Iraq

Lao National Geographic Department, Lao PDR

Siberian State Academy of Geodesy, Russian Federation

This brings the number of affiliate members to 28. The co-operation with
national mapping and cadastre organisations was also strengthened by
organising the Forum for chief executives of these organisations. These
meetings will continue at the next FIG conferences.

In addition two new corporate members were endorsed: Derinsu Underwater
Engineering Ltd., Turkey; and Al-Mutakamilad Real Estate (Cityplex), Jordan
and one academic member admitted to membership: University of Novi Sad from
Republic of Serbia.

Exhibition and technical tours

The Working Week was supported by several FIG corporate members both as
sponsors and as exhibitors in the exhibition. The gold sponsors were ESRI
and Trimble that also sponsored the FIG Foundation Dinner at the Vasa
Museum. The local gold sponsors were the National Land Survey (Lantmäteriet)
and Swedesurvey. They also contributed together with the ministries to the
successful FIG/UN-HABITAT seminar. The exhibition was this time smaller than
normally but the concept will be developed for the next conferences together
with the corporate members. FIG is most grateful for its sponsors and
corporate members for their continuous support.

Technical tours included a full-day visit to Gävle to learn from the
National Land Survey and Swedesurvey. The other tours included an overview
on planning in Stockholm waterfronts and visit to Trimble in Danderyd as
well as to the Stockholm City Survey Department and to the Swedish Maritime
Administration.

The history pre-conference workshop collected about 60 participants.

Social events

The social functions of the working week started with a welcome reception
at the famous Stockholm City Hall hosted by the City of Stockholm and its
Lord Mayor Bo Bladholm. The venue of the Nobel Prize Winner Dinner
was also an excellent place to start the FIG Working Week.

The FIG Foundation Dinner gathered 300 participants to the Vasa Museum to
see the royal flagship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 and that was
raised from the depths of Stockholm harbour in 1961.

The Nordic speciality “hemma hos” gave a unique opportunity for
international participants to go for a home visit and to get to know the
Swedish surveyors and their way of living in different locations in
Stockholm.

The gala dinner was arranged at the Vintergarden at the Grand Hotel, the
hotel in Stockholm over a great dinner and music performances by the student
choir of technological students.

The farewell reception was hosted by the FIG 2010 organising committee in
the foyer of Norra Latin under the well-known Swedish paintings.

Summary statement

In his Closing Address Prof Stig Enemark spoke about the success of the
conference. He recalled a Native American saying, used by Dr. Ashraf Ghani:
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children”. He also referred to the Commission on Legal Empowerment of
the Poor published report: “Making the Law Work for Everyone” with a four
pillar approach on empowerment of the poor: access to justice and the rule
of law, property rights, labour rights and business rights. When Dr Ashraf
Ghani stated that the Land Professional can bring Information, Knowledge and
Wisdom into Harmony, that is where, as Prof Enemark said, the ‘golden
medals’ of the profession’s contribution to Land Administration appear:
mapping, planning, property and land rights (security of tenure), cadastral
services, valuation (most relevant for self supporting local governments),
and financial services. This represents a bundle of interests from the
perspective of government.

President Enemark repeated that FIG is strongly committed to the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the UN-HABITAT agenda on the Global
Land Tool Network. UN agencies have access to national governments and to
setting a global agenda, but UN agencies will often depend on interest
groups and Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) for implementing this
agenda. Global partnerships will establish the link that drives development
for achieving the global agenda such as the MDGs. This agenda includes the
big challenges of the new millennium: climate change, food shortage, energy
scarcity, urban growth, environmental degradation and natural disasters. All
these issues relate to governance and management of land. Land governance
and management is a core area for surveyors – the Land Professionals. It
will require:

High level geodesy models to predict future change

Modern surveying and mapping tools to support management and
implementation

Spatial data infrastructures to support decision making on the
natural and built environment

Secure tenure systems

Sustainable systems for land valuation, land use management and land
development

Systems for transparency and good governance

President Enemark concluded that we must mobilise the next generation of
Land Professionals. “We must continue to develop innovative and
transitionary solutions to address global inequality in land and property
ownership and tenure. We can act as Professional Facilitators – we can ‘Fly
High’ and we are providing the underlying data to enable monitoring and
support decision making for sustainable development.”

Finally President Enemark thanked our Swedish colleagues under the
excellent chairmanship of Conference Director Svante Astermo, and the
support of the National Land Survey of Sweden (Lantmäteriet) and Swedesurvey
. The next FIG Working Week will be held in Eilat, Israel, 3-8 May 2009.

International Federation of Surveyors, FIG, is a United Nations and World Bank recognized
non-governmental organization of national member associations
and covers the whole range of professional fields within the
global surveying community. It provides an international forum
for discussion and development aiming to promote professional
practice and standards.